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TelefÃ³nica taps six bidders for Endemol

TelefÃ³nica has selected six bidders for its Endemol unit and has given them until next month to make binding offers, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday.

The Dutch television-production company is expected to fetch about â‚¬3bn ($4bn) -- far less than the â‚¬5.5bn that TelefÃ³nica paid for the company seven years ago in the middle of a dot-com-era splurge.

A spokesman for Cyrte Investments, the investment company of former Endemol owner John de Mol, confirmed that his company has gone through to the second round of Endemol bidding, together with Italian broadcaster Mediaset and US investment bank Goldman Sachs. The person close to the situation said a second bidder group is led by US private equity firm Apax Partners, while a third group is made up of French private equity firm PAI Partners and Stephane Courbit, head of Endemol's French operations.